As it turns out, at some point in your life, you probably watched arguably one of the most popular anime to ever exist: Sword Art Online, or perhaps you read the light novel, or the manga, (or something related to the franchise? I don't know), and thought to yourself "Oh, this is neat, would be cool if it was turned into a game", and upon coming across Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment on the Steam store, you couldn't help yourself and HAD to spend the money to get it... or you just bought it because you like to hoard games. Either way, you ended up realizing that buying this game was a HUGE mistake, because instead of getting an experience similar to that of the anime, all you got is this grindfest button-mashing RPG which seems to never flicking end.

After spending a rather concerning amount of time playing this game across almost an entire frogging year, I have finally beaten it, and I now come to you with this guide in which I will try my very best so that YOU don't have to go through the suffering I went through!

I'll explain some concepts, give you some tips and overall just tell you how to beat the game in an optimized manner and how to not lose your mind trying to understand its rather messy mechanics. I hope you enjoy this guide more than you'll probably enjoy the game!

NOTE: Be advised that this guide will contain a few spoilers, so if you're reading it before completing the game (as I quite frankly would want you to), you might find yourself disappointed... too bad!

NOTE: Because Steam censors noble words such as ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I'll replace bad words with slightly-similar, stupid-sounding words. ♥♥♥♥ you Steam.

Most of the game's concepts are obviously explained in-game through the tutorial and through Argo's Intel. To understand some basic and advanced concepts which are not well-explained in the game or which you might have missed the explanation for (likely because you skip all dialog, which makes you a degenerate), I recommend you check A Veteran's Useful Intel.

Now, some basic things you need to keep in mind:

• If your HP goes to 0, you die and are forced to restart from your last save at the beginning of a level (duh)
  
• If one of your companions, even if it's a regular NPC, dies, it's the same fate for you, unless it is a NPC during a floor boss fight, in which case it's all good.
  
• Your inventory has a 200 unique item limit. Each item has a stack limit; potions and crystals can be stacked up 10, except for Teleport Crystals which can be stacked to 99. Trade/craft items can be stocked up to 99. Weapons and armor vary, but most armor seems to be stackable up to 5.
  
• Your storage is limited to up to 1000 unique items. All items, if I'm not mistaken, stack up to 99 in your storage. Getting any items fully stacked in your inventory and storage will make them be sent to the trash, or in other words, you won't get them and they'll be lost forever, so make sure to use or sell excess items regularly.
  
• Best way to free up space is to store trade/craft items in your inventory. When you'll use them to craft, you won't need to have them in your inventory.
  
• NPCs level up too. They'll level up passively as you play the game.
  
• You can fall off the map to your death in some areas of the Hollow Area. Be careful.
  
• Don't be scared to complete the main game, you can keep playing in your save after you do.

Imagine you bought this game on release for the PS Vita back in like 2014 or whenever it was released (I didn't care enough to research it), and you had to go ALL the way through the hassle of farming for weapons, items and such, but worry not, for in the Steam release of the game you can laugh at the dumb people from over a decade ago in 4 simple steps:

1. Open the not-really-pause menu (Escape key, or arguably a Start button if you're a weird person who plays PC games with a controller).
2. Go to "Items", below "Skills" (which you probably lack) and above "Friends" (which you CERTAINLY lack)
3. Go to the "DLC" tab, the rightmost tab in case you don't know how to read latin script (in which case, how are you reading this? Machine translation???)
4. Cycle through the many items in this part of the inventory. Try to claim them, not all can be claimed as they instead work basically as keys to buy special items. From those you can claim, you'll get a few special weapons, a shield, armor and some ores. This will make it easy to start the game off with some improved gear.



This here game is basically a combination of two titles in one, so the end result is that you have basically two games to complete, which can be played and completed independently.

In order to complete the main game, you need to beat all the floors up to floor 100, naturally. On the other hand, to beat the Hollow Area, you'll have to go through the entire area, completing its main quests, and then do a couple of final boss fights. These two things will pop up the credits for the game, but finishing Aincrad is what counts as the game getting completed, so the Hollow Area is entirely optional.

Be aware that in order to 100% the game, you will have to beat Aincrad twice in order to unlock certain gallery entries. Once you beat the Hollow Area, it'll remain completely unlocked even after you begin a new game in your save. The game has no percentage counter nor any official "100%" completion, so in simple terms, just completing all achievements should be enough to claim 100% completion.

After beating Aincrad, you'll unlock a few more options in the main menu:

• New Game: Basically New Game+, you'll start the Aincrad arc again while keeping all your unlocks and items, and be given the chance to increase the enemies' level by 10 for each "Loop" (game completion). This will also mean you can (and have) to do cutscenes again (see below to know how to skip them).
  
• Last Battle: Lets you do the final Aincrad boss battle in floor 100 starting from the companion selection scene. Good to unlock each heroines' ending quickly after beating the game.
  
• Gallery: Lets you revisit all unlocked scenes, photos and videos.

The main game can be beaten indefinite times, but in order to redo anything in the Hollow Area or reset anything else, you'll have to start a new save.


So, you're playing the game and you find yourself with less Col in your pockets than Argentina had dollars circa 2001. Quests don't give you a lot of Col, and the most you got came from some chests! What an awful situation!

Well, the game has a serious inflation issue given that the majority of items have a rather elevated price, but conversely, the items you can sell are also usually valuable. You can sell almost all your items (except for a few unique items, usually plot-related) to any trader, be that Agil, the 76th floor's NPCs, the Multiplayer lobby's NPCs or the floor-menu shops, they will all pay the same.

The best idea is to sell excess weapons, armor, potions and crystals and not to sell ores and crafting items. Crafting items tend to be hard to get and not very valuable, ores are easier to get but you'll need them to improve your weapons and to craft new weapons as well. On the other hand, even crappy weapons can be worth quite a lot, and you'll generally not use them for anything, so you should sell them to make a quick buck and be able to buy new stuff and craft weapons. You can also collect them, but due to space constraints, I suggest you sell any repeated weapons and armor. Potions and crystals are usually useless, specially once you unlock more buff and restorative skills, so I also suggest you sell them due to them being superfluous, and only keep Teleport Crystals, XP-enhancing and Drop-enhancing potions.


First off, if this is what you think, you're an acehole who doesn't know how to enjoy videogames. Apart from this, you might reach a point in which you'll want to skip over previously-played scenes and dialogs when replaying the game (which you will have to). You can skip all scenes and videos holding the Escape button. You can also rush through most dialog, including context menus, holding `/°/| (you know, that button left of 1 on your keyboard, whatever its flocking name is).

This should help you cut a lot of time from any replay of the game and make it much more bearable.


Some of the game's mechanisms, such as the chatting system when dating NPCs, are tied to the framerate. Given the age of the game and its optimization, any modern PC can easily get hundreds or even thousands of FPS, which makes it sometimes impossible to pass a dialog because the game won't register key presses. There might also be some other issues tied to framerate.

Easiest way to limit your framerate is by turning V-Sync on in the game's settings menu, but this also turns the game a bit more clunky and can introduce artifacts, in which case, I recommend configuring your GPU's drivers to limit your framerate (I'd link a tutorial, but I'm too lazy, Google it! Or DuckDuckGo it! Or whichever search engine you use, I don't know fam).

Well, yes, Hollow Fragment is a game by itself, but it includes the entirety of the 2013 PSP-exclusive Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment, which is the main game in Aincrad.

In other words, Aincrad is the plotline for Infinity Moment, and the Hollow Area is the plotline for Hollow Fragment. The two games are combined and this is primarily the reason why both parts of the game can be played independently and don't depend on each other (generally).

Now, time for a bit of an analysis of the two parts of the game.

Aincrad is the primary part of the game and its completion is what basically can be considered as "beating the game". The concept of beating Aincrad is evident in the entirety of the SAO universe, but in case you forgot or are too mentally deficient to understand it: you gotta beat all 100 floors.

Given that the game starts off in floor 76, all you really gotta do is beat just 25 floors. In order to do this, you just gotta run through the different dungeons in each floor, which are quite linear, gather info on the boss, then find the boss room and trigger the boss fight from Arc Sophia.

Gathering info, as explained in the game itself, implies completing certain quests given to you by a 76th floor NPC (Kirby); these quests are generally either collecting a certain amount of drops found in each floor, beating a certain amount of enemies, or collecting a certain amount of drops from enemies. Upon completing these missions, you'll get Col, XP and, in some cases, Potions, Crystals or Ores.

• Collected items don't have to be collected in the floor the quest is related to, they can be collected anywhere else (including the Hollow Area and multiplayer).
  
• The enemies that must be beaten are supposed to have a small bubble with a "!" above them, and they're generally located in a specific part of each floor.
  
• Not all missions are mandatory, only the ones which give you boss information. You can ignore the rest.
  
• The last few floors don't have any missions to collect boss information.
  
• The special enemies you need to beat to gather boss info tend to be in a separate dungeon which deviates from the linear path to the boss room. You'll see a notification of a "special enemy being nearby" when entering these dungeons.
  
• You can collect multiple drops from each floor's pickup points, just keep pressing "E" until you get a message that you couldn't find anymore.
  
• These collection points are restarted every 24 in-game hours and there are usually 3 or 4 of them.
  
• Enemies respawns depend on real time and not in-game time, and they generally take around a minute to respawn.

Each floor has a HNM within it. These enemies are generally VERY high level, and fighting against them in the beginning of the game is highly risky, but apart from being able to provide a large sum of XP, they are the key to getting special weapons and armor once you complete certain Implementations in the Hollow Area (see below).

Each floor also has various chests laid throughout it. These chests, if I'm not mistaken, have the same drops each playthrough, and this ranges from weapons, to armor, to potions/crystals, to items and large sums of Col. Some chests contain plot items. Once opened, they cannot be re-opened until you start a New Game.

Another thing unique to each floor are its vendors. Different floors offer different armor and weapons, some also offer unique potions/crystals.


Each floor has a boss fight (except for the last two, which have more than one). These bosses have 3 health bars and generally deal large sums of damage to lower-level players. During boss fights, a number of Aincrad NPCs belonging to two or three of the same guild will join in and support you and yoru companion (implying you brought one... you should). These NPCs will carry out your orders, but they generally tend to be quite weak.

Each enemy has weaknesses and special skills, as well as attack patterns. While the game would expect you to learn said things, truth is that the easiest way to beat each boss fight is by spamming sword skills until the boss' health bar is depleted... there really is no better strategy. Be aware that each boss has a last-hit bonus, which is generally a piece of armor. These pieces of armor can actually be found elsewhere, and so they're not unique, but it is important you get the last hit on each boss in order to get an achievement (see below for more information). Both your companion and NPCs can get said last-hit bonus, in which case it'll be lost, and since the boss fights cannot be replayed, you'll have to start a New Game to get a chance to do the last hit yourself.

These boss fights also have a rank. What is this rank? Basically your performance in the battle. Is it important? Not at all, it's pointless, so ignore it and don't try to improve it. You should naturally just focus on not dying, and preferably, not letting any NPCs die, since if they do, they die permanently and you can't unlock the "Not on My Watch!" achievement unless you replay the entire game.


When you go to the floor selection screen in Aincrad, in Arc Sophia (F76), you'll have two dungeons you can enter: the Castle of Transgression and Oblivion's Gatekeeper.

The Castle of Transgression is comprised of a short labyrinth in which you'll face off some lvl 110+ enemies and open some normal chests with low-tier loot. You can only choose one path, and it'll block the others. At the end of the dungeon, you'll enter a room in which you'll face a boss the same way you'd face one during a floor boss fight, but only with your companion. I believe you can get a Last Attack Bonus from said boss. I recommend you are at least level 150 before trying to do this, specially considering you can't leave the room once you enter it until you beat the boss (or you or your companion dies).

Oblivion's Gatekeeper is simply a boss fight against a boss called "The Ultimate Ruler". This boss has VERY high defense, so you'll deal basically 10% of your regular damage (see the skills sections to know how to ease the battle). This fight can take many minutes, specially if your level is low. I recommend you are at least level 150 as well before you do this, and there seems to be no real reward from fighting this boss, but it's a good battle to boost a companion's combat style stats (also see later in the guide to learn more about this).

The Hollow Area is the largest part of the game and it offers technically unlimited playtime. The Hollow Area arc is considerably longer than Aincrad's and can take a considerable amount of time to beat. Unlike Aincrad, and as explained before, once you beat the Hollow Area in your save, only way to replay its arc is by starting a new game.

The Hollow Area is separated in 6 areas, plus a special zone. You'll start out in the Selvendys Forest Area, which has the lowest-leveled enemies, and finish up the Hollow Arc in the Alevaste Otherwold Area, which, as you guessed it, is the hardest part. However, since the beginning of the game (I believe), you'll have access to the Abandoned Area, which is a DLC part of the game which ranges in difficulty from "Easy" to "I want to uninstall this game". My personal recommendation is to try and beat the Abandoned Area alongside the rest of the Hollow Area simultaneously, and only do its boss fights once the Hollow Fragment Arc has been completed, given their massive difficulty.

As you can consult in the "Hollow Map" option in the not-really-pause menu, each area is divided in various interconnected dungeons. Every a few dungeons, you'll find a teleporter which allows you to go back to the Administrarion Area. Don't waste your time running around and try to always use a teleporter to save yourself the time. It's also worth mentioning that, unlike how it is put at the beginning of the game, teleport crystals do work in the Hollow Area, just not in a few rooms, so just use them instead of running back to the nearest teleporter.

As with Aincrad, various dungeons in the Hollow Area have chests. These chests are either blue or red/golden. The first usually contain ores, potions, crystals, Col or low-tier items, while the latter tend to contain high-tier armor, weapons and shields. Some chests can only be opened once, but unlike Aincrad, a considerable amount of them can be opened again unlimited times, and if I'm not mistaken, their contents respawn every around 15 or 20 real minutes, so the amount of items you can get is unlimited, and they're randomized.


As you can see in the Hollow Map when you press Tab, there are a bunch of circles which represent Hollow Missions:


At first the whole thing will look confusing, but it's pretty simple in reality:

• Each Hollow Mission has a rank (from 1 to 3) which determines its difficulty and rewards.
  
• The rank for each Hollow Mission is made clear by the size of the circle pointing it out on the map. Small circles are a Rank 1, Medium circles are a Rank 2, and Large cicles are Rank 3.
  
• Purple circles are Boss Fights, which are generally Rank 2.
  
• Red circles are Advanced Abandoned Area missions, which are generally Rank 3.
  
• The inner part of the circle represents the time left to complete the mission. Once the circle gets filled, the mission disappears.
  
• New Hollow Missions reappear constantly.

You might have also noticed that there are Hollow Points. These are basically just score, are capped at 9999, they can go down, and they have no use at all, so ignore them.

You might have also noticed that each area has an Area Rank. This rank is increased by beating missions in these areas, it goes up to 3, and higher ranks unlock higher-rank Hollow Missions. These ranks wear out so you need to regularly keep doing missions in these areas to keep it up.


The Hollow Area has challenges known as Implementations. Only can be done at a time and they can be accessed from the "Implementations" option in the not-really-pause menu. These generally are grindy and unlock new skills, mechanics, and drop/purchasable items. See below for tips to complete these damned things.


Upon reaching the end of the Hollow Fragment arc, you'll unlock an Underground section you can access from the Administration Area. It consists of 10 levels with random enemies and chests, and a boss fight at the end (two boss fights the first time you do it). You can repeat this dungeon as many times as you want.

Once you complete the aforementioned Arc, you should also unlock the Infinite Underground Dungeon. This follows the same pattern as the underground section I just discussed about, but it goes on and on, with a boss fight every 10 levels. The enemies will become harder as you make progress, and after each boss fight, you can obtain a special weapon of the type you want. If I'm not mistaken, you'll also unlock a teleport every 20 levels, so you can quickstart from a certain floor later. This infinite dungeon is great for farming pretty much anything: items, weapons, experience and affinity.

Sword skills are pretty much how this game's combat system works: just spam them and may God help you, because there's barely anything else to do. As with all RPGs, skills have a countdown. SAO's combat system is built mostly around these sword skills, which are combos which can also apply effects on you or your enemy when used.

Here are some basic tips when it comes to sword skills:

• You can spam the praise button (1) when with a companion to praise them for their combat activities. This will reduce the cooldown of all your skills by 10%.
  
• Certain weapons and armor (such as the Skill Holder cape) can passively reduce your skill cooldowns.
  
• Skills can fail and/or be cancelled by your enemies, but not by you.
  
• "High accuracy skills" tend to often hit their targets even if your accuracy and/or their evasion is high.
  
• AoE skills have different areas of effect, some are 360°, some front and back, and some can only hit enemies in front of you.
  
• Debuff skills can fail on your enemies, but you can use buff their accuracy with certain special armor pieces (such as the Recluse's Cape)

Each weapon type (oddly including non-swords) have a set of Sword Skills. Each skill has a determined number of hits, they don't spend SP, and there are different types of Sword Skills:

• Self-buff: Gives you a buff on use. Be aware that just beginning a sword skill counts it as used.
  
• Debuff: Debuffs an enemy on hit.
  
• High-accuracy: Precise, will generally hit even enemies with great evasion values.
  
• Strong: Tend to deal significant damage.
  
• Special: Best skill from each weapon's skill tree, cannot be chained with others and tend to have special animations.
  
• AoE: Can hit multiple enemies at once. Each skill has a different reach.
  
• Super Armor: Cannot be cancelled by the enemy (generally) when being used.

Each weapon type tends to follow a pattern for its skills' purposes, which helps create de facto classes and playstyles:

• Daggers: Quick debuffing.
  
• 1H Swords: Debuffing and ailments.
  
• Scimitars: AoE-focused defense debuffing.
  
• Rapiers: High-accuracy debuffing.
  
• Dual Wielding: Combo-focused debuffing and interrupting enemies with hits.
  
• Clubs: Interruption-focused based on stunning enemies.
  
• Axes: Strong attacks with some AoE and debuffs.
  
• Spears: AoE-focused, slow high-level debuffing.
  
• Katanas: Quick, high damage bleeding and defense denial.
  
• 2H Swords: Entirely-AoE self-buffing.

Sword Skills can be ranked up. What does this do? I have no idea, honestly, but every 100th, 1000th and 10000th use of a specific skill, you'll gain a star for it. Congrats!


There are a few skills which can only be unlocked through events or quests. Which ones are they? I honestly don't recall and I'm too lazy to care to investigate, but just know that by playing the game and doing all the Hollow Area and Aincrad events, you should unlock one or two of these skills. There are also skills unlocked from implementations:

• Black Howling Assault (Dual-Wielding)
  
• Gravity Magnum (Dagger)
  
• Ripping Massacre (Scimitar)
  
• Valkyrie Nights (Rapier)
  
• Disaster Hollow (Axe)
  
• Carnage Alliance (1H Sword)
  
• Akatsukirei (Katana)
  
• Heart Beat Stopper (Club)
  
• Judgment Piercer (Spear)
  
• Sweet Revenge (2H Sword)

In the Hollow Area's Abandoned Area, there's a dungeon (the huge doors at the Cordia Gardens) which will lead you to a boss fight in which, if you win it, it'll unlock a special "Arcane" skill for whatever weapon you had equipped at the moment of defeating the boss. These Arcane Skills can deal up to millions in damage, but they take a long time to charge and have very long cooldowns. These are great to deal with HNMs and bosses.


After you do the "From Sword Skill to Sword Skill" implementation, you'll unlock the Skill Chaining system, which will let you chain multiple skills in a row. Most sword skills can be chained at certain points during their combos, and this will be signaled by a quick flashing purple light (as seen in the image below). At the time ythis light appears, you need to trigger the desired skill. If you fail, you won't be able to chain another skill until the current one ends.



There's a feature the game doesn't explain very well, and which most players will probably find impossible to understand unless someone else (like yours truly) explains it to them. Turns out that each sword skill has a stat modifier, which increases their damage by a percentage of a specific stat of the player.


Here you can see this skill has a 50% modified for STRength and VITality, in other words, the damage of the skill will be increased by 50% of your STR and VIT stats. Thanks to this, you can assign each skill certain equipment on use to increase its efficiency. To do this, just double click a skill, and in the "Skill Edit" window, select pieces of equipment which increase the stats which boost the skill, and preferably turn the "Return to Inventory after Activation" option to "On", so that your equipment isn't changed permanently after using the skill.



You can see the stats to boost for Arcane Skills in the guide I mentioned at the beginning of this guide.


Skill Points are what you use to unlock skills. They are capped at 999, and you obtain them simply by fighting with any weapon, when evading and when blocking hits with a shield (I believe). The easiest way to get Skill Points is by fighting higher-level enemies, since they'll grant you faster progress towards unlocking more of them. You can get unlimited Skill Points and, therefore, unlock all skills.

While Sword Skills do the killing, there are also battle skills, which don't do the battle, really, but help you throughout it. They are basically skills which provide passive effects in combat. These skills take care of a few things:

• Healing you
  
• Healing your teammates
  
• Causing status ailments on you
  
• Causing status ailments on the enemy
  
• Buffing your stats
  
• Buffing your teammates' stats
  
• Debuffing your stats
  
• Debuffing the enemy's stats
  
• Modifying your Hate and your teammates'
  
• Modifying the enemy's Hate
  
• Stunning your enemy
  
• Increasing your XP earning
  
• Increasing your teammates' XP earning (and nullifying yours)
  
• Showing enemies on the map

Here are some basic tips when it comes to battle skills:

• As with sword skills, they have cooldowns, and you can spam the praise button (1) when with a companion to reduce the cooldown of all your skills by 10%.
  
• Weapons and armor like the Skill Holder can also reduce your skill recharge time.
  
• Most battle skills are instantaneous and can't be cancelled.
  
• Debuff battle skills can fail on your enemies too, but you can buff their accuracy with certain special armor pieces as well.
  
• Stacking too many buffs and debuffs will make some active ones disappear to make space for new ones, be wary of this.
  
• If you use a battle skill while autoattacking, you might get stuck in the autoattack animation, which will make you vulnerable. Try to move when using a battle skill.

Battle skills belong to certain categories within the Skill Tree, and are unlocked the same as Sword Skills. These different categories are unlocked as you level up your weapon proficiencies (see below). By completing Implementations, you can unlock more of these skills.

When you unlock each category, you also unlock a Passive Skill, which you can equip. To do this, go to a category, and press the spacebar on the uppermost skill of the category. These passive skills will provide you with small buffs which will be active all the time. Make sure to switch these whenever necessary.


Some concepts are not well-explained in the game (or they are and literally nobody cares to check Argo's Intel). Battle skills apply different effects and do different things. Here I'll try to explain some of these concepts.

• HP/SP Regen: Self-explanatory, grants passive HP or SP regeneration.
  
• Physical debuff resistance: Makes it harder for enemies to apply physical debuffs on you.
  
• HP Absorb: Turns the damage you deal into HP, so you regenerate HP by dealing damage at a 1:1 rate.
  
• Double attacks: Increases your chances of dealing multiple hits for each autoattack.
  
• Rear critical bonus: Increases the critical damage or rate when attacking an enemy's back.
  
• Attack delay: Modifies the amount of time between autoattacks.
  
• Skill activation time: Makes sword skills activate faster.
  
• Skill lock: Reduces the possibility of the player being stuck waiting to carry out a sword skill.
  
• SP Drain: Takes away SP automatically from the player.
  
• Attack based on SP: Increases your attack based on your SP amount.
  
• Counter: Nullifies an enemies' attack and returns the damage (I think, not entirely sure honestly).
  
• Physical Clone buff: Grants a Physical Clone which nullifies incoming damage.
  
• Debuff Clone: Grants a Debuff Clone which nullifies incoming debuffs (and probably existing ones).

Now, here are the skills I recommend the most you unlock and use:

Part of the Searching category. This applies a high-ranking Defense Down on your enemy and increases your ATK based on your DEF (also debuffing your defense). Recommend using it against though enemies.


Part of the Precision category. Considerably increases your accuracy, which is great when using inaccurate weapons such as Scimitars or Clubs, as well as when fighting against enemies with high evasion.

Also part of the Precision category. Very useful to quickly recover all of your SP while in combat since it also costs 0 SP to cast.

Part of the Footwork category. This is a battle skill of VITAL importance (hehe), since it recovers a huge amount of HP for you and every one of your teammates. Recommend using it whenever you AND your teammates are in a harsh situation, but be cautious, it has a long recast time (2 minutes).

Part of the Grace category. Very useful to instantly recover HP and obtain decent regen. Takes about a minute to recast so it can be used often in long battles.


Also part of the Grace category. Highly useful when fighting hard bosses since it'll provide you and your teammates with damage nullification.

Also part of the Grace category. Highly useful when fighting enemies which debuff you often, since it nullifies all debuffs with 100% success rate.


Part of the Warding category. Costs 300 SP but it makes the entire party practically immortal for some 30 seconds. Extremely useful if you get in a bad situation.

Part of the Bodybuilding category. As with the previous skill, extremely useful when in complicated situations, and very useful when fighting enemies that interrupt you constantly. Doesn't last as long as "Protective Armor" but it costs 200 SP.

Also part of the Bodybuilding category. Highly useful if your Max HP is debuffed.

Part of the Tactics category. Extremely useful when fighting enemies with high evasion, since it can debuff their EVA and allow you to land attacks on them consistently.

Part of the Finesse category. Ignores all of the opponent's DEF, which translates to heavy damage. Recommend using it with hard-hitting sword skills.


Part of the Rallying category. Good way to buff your teammates and shorten battles by dealing extra damage.


While the game provides you with 12 quick-skill slots (Q, E, RMB, LMB and the ALT & Shift slots), you can actually access the skill menu faster than by using the not-really-pause menu. The fastest way is by pressing SHIFT+ALT, or alternatively, using the context menu ("\", or basically key above your Right Shift and to the lower left of your Enter key), which is slower.

You should also take time and reorder your skills in the Skill Menu. Personally, I ordered them by their effect, as may see below, but you can order them as you see fit, be it by usefulness, color, or anything else you can think of.

Hollow Fragment, as the vast majority of RPGs, is based around a level system; the higher your level, the stronger you are, you know, 1+1=2 (generally). However, this game has a real issue, and it is that it's way too unbalanced in favor of the player; battles are not challenging unless they're against enemies that are, at least, 10 levels above you, and they're usually completely menial when facing any enemy your level or below.

Leveling up in this game is really simple: kill enemies, get XP. You can also get XP from completing Aincrad quests, but the main way is to just kill enemies. The XP system will award you XP based on the level of the enemy you beat. Beating enemies some 15 levels below you or more will award you some 10 XP points, beating enemies some 10 levels below you will get you 50-100 XP, beating enemies roughly your level will give you somewhere between 100-500 XP, enemies somewhat above your level 500-2000 XP, and any enemies way above your level will get you some 4000 XP (capped, no real difference between beating an enemy 20 or 50 levels higher).

Now, you'll level up VERY fast usually, and throughout your normal gameplay, you should reach around level 150, implying you do both arcs and their optional content. Naturally, at first, you'll want to keep to the starting areas to level up, but once you're about level 120~, the best place to go level up to is the Alevaste Otherworld Area in the Hollow Area, specifically in the Gathering of Chattering Spirits and the Miasmatic Ruins of the Sacred Sword (see below).


One important thing you should know is that you can use potions and skills to boost your XP gain. These include the passive skill of the Searching category, Expert Eye, which will grant you a 10% XP boost, the Gain XP skill (also part of the Searching category), which will also grant you another 10% XP, and the XP Flagon potions, which will grant you a 15% or 25% boost. You can find these potions in the Hollow Area or buy them from vendors.





Once you're about level 130, the main areas of the Hollow Area will be completely pointless. While farming HNMs in each Aincrad floor can still be a good source of XP, it's a boring, complicated process. This is when you'll want to move onto the Abandoned Area, where you'll find 3 dungeons perfect for leveling up:

• Secured Deepwood: Has many enemies around level 160, they're not too though but they'll gang up on you usually.
  
• Shrine of Frozen Obliteration: Has mostly normal enemies except in the chamber in its center, where you'll find 3 groups of 5 lvl 180+ golems, a group of other 3 golems, and a lvl 200+ NM. They WILL gang up on you and can kill you quickly, so I recommend you use invincibility skills.
  
• Snow-Crowned Peak: Arguably the best area to level up. It's filled with enemies ranging from level 150~ up to levels above 200, and you can normally isolate battles.

However, by the time you reach around level 170, the main game will become useless for leveling up since most enemies will award you very little XP, which is the perfect reason to present you to our lord and savior, Solo Multiplayer.


Arguably, "solo multiplayer" is an oxymoron, but regardless, this is the gamemode in which you'll have to do most of your leveling if you want to fully beat the Hollow Area (given that the Advanced Quests are VERY hard). Since the game's multiplayer is completely dead and buried by now, Solo Multiplayer allows you to replicate the multiplayer experience by replacing people you can get angry with with bots you can get angry with, said bots being any of the game's NPCs.

Some things worth knowing about solo multiplayer:

• Your level, items, and those of the NPCs are shared with singleplayer, since they're tied to your save, so whatever you get in MP carries over to singleplayer and vice versa.
  
• Multiplayer gametime is counted alongside singleplayer gametime, they're the same.
  
• Characters can die in Multiplayer without repercussions, and you can just revive them during or after a battle.
  
• You can't get special weapons from the Endless Dungeon in MP.
  
• Chests work the same as in singleplayer, so they can be reopened limitless times.
  
• Dying just returns you back to the Communications Room, no items or XP lost.
  
• While you can carry a total of 4 partners with you in Solo Multiplayer, and they all can level up, you can only raise affinity with the main partner you're adventuring with.
  
• You cannot chat or give your partners weapon/armor while in Solo Multiplayer.

Now, to play Solo Multiplayer all you gotta do is go to the main menu, and select the "Solo Multiplayer" option. You'll be met with this screen:


Here you can select any quest from the Hollow Area, a sub-mission which involves some grinding to boost up drop rates, and you can select one of 3 difficulties, each increasing the level of enemies in intervals of around 50 levels. While you can always use Solo Multiplayer to farm items or increase your partners' stats anda affinity, the main reason to play it is to level up, so, you'll want to select the "Death Game" difficulty so that you'll reap the most XP possible from each enemy you kill.

Once you start a Solo Multiplayer game, you'll arrive at the lobby (usually with your current singleplayer partner). Here you'll have a few vendor NPCs, a trading NPC (for actual MP), and two more NPCs which allow you to pick a mission and your partners. Personally, I recommend you carry your best partners around with you and that you use either the "Debuffer" or "Attacker" roles.


Now, what you'll want to do is just run around the Hollow Area killing as many enemies as possible. It's best to ignore missions, since they're not mandatory. As for the best places to farm XP, I've got two recommendations:


First is the Beedance Sprawl, right off the very first dungeon of the Hollow Area, in the Selvendys Forest Area. Here you'll find a large amount of bees (about 50), which are above level 200 in Death Game difficulty. They're easy to beat even if you're underleveled, and due to the circular layout of the dungeon, you can just run around it killing bees and they'll respawn by the time you made a full lap around the place.


The other place I recommend to level up is the Infinite Dungeon in the Administrarion Area. The first 10 floors are already filled with enemies level 230+ in Death Game, so you can play this once you've leveled up enough, or you can go above floor 20 in Hard, where enemies will be roughly above level 200.

Now, my personal recommendation is that you level up to, at least, level 205. Once you reach this level, beating all the enemies you'll find in singleplayer, including the Advanced Quest HNMs, should be possible. I also recommend you bring one companion alongside and try to level them up as high as possible so that you can make battles easier.

Implementations are one of the most annoying aspects of the game; they're basically quests you can only do in the Hollow Area and while carrying out a Hollow Mission. You can only do ONE of these at a time, cancelling them will nullify all of their progress, and they usually imply doing a lot of grinding to unlock one of these things:

• Battle Skills
  
• Sword Skills
  
• Floor-specific vendor items
  
• Rare drops for each Aincrad floor's NMs (weapons and armor)
  
• Combat features (such as skill chaining)
  
• More Implementations

In other words, you'll do these implementations to then, generally, have to grind Col or enemies to get other items or skill points to unlock the skills you unlocked (which will be added to certain categories in the Skills Tree and you'll unlock by spending a rather high amount of points). However, you'll want to do at least a few of these to make the game easier (Specifically Implementation - Original Sword Skill System, and do ALL of these to obtain 100% completion.

While, generally, the things you need to do to complete Implementations are very straightforward, the process to do them can be painful. First, some general tips:

• You can do implementations in Multiplayer (including Solo Multiplayer), and this can usually make them much easier and faster.
  
• They're supposed to take time, so don't fret and don't try to do long ones in a single day unless you want to stress yourself out.
  
• You'll want to focus on the easiest ones first, then move onto harder ones.
  
• Make sure you have various Battle Skills unlocked so that you can make certain Implementations easier to complete.

Now, next, I'll just give you general tips on how to complete some specific Implementations.


Exact Attacks are a type of Burst Attack in which you have to click at a specific time between attacks to get an ACC buff. You'll want to follow a similar strategy as with regular Burst Attacks, but you'll want to pay attention to your character, as while doing a Burst Attack, you'll see a circle begin to close on your character, as in the image below.


Once this circle closes in and becomes small enough, you'll want to click at that exact moment to trigger an Exact Attack. You'll know if you succeeded if you then see another circle of light blue particles as seen below.



While just hitting sword skills in general is a rather straightforward thing, doing so quickly enough is a pain in the butt. My personal recommendation is that you use a 1H Sword (since it has a lot of quick 1-hit skills), equip the "Skill Holder" cape, and, if possible, obtain a sword with a Skill Charge Time buff (you can get these by doing the boss minigame in the Hall of the Exploited dungeon). Bring a companion with you to praise them constantly and reduce charge times even further. You can also do this in Solo Multiplayer while using the Debuffer role to make things even faster.


Chaining sword skills can be hard at first, and being consistent enough to chain 3, 4 and 5 in a row is quite a feat, but not at all impossible. Now, you'll preferably want to use a 1H Sword or a 2H Sword, again with the "Skill Holder Cape", and, if possible, with the aforementioned buff. Just put a different skill in all 8 quick-skill slots and go at it.

You'll run into an issue with the last skill-chaining-related implementation, since it asks you to chain skills during a Rank 3 mission (i.e. fighting a HNM). Ou can actually do this very easily by doing the "Born from the Nightmare of Chaos" Hollow Mission at the Clutch of the Dark Record. There you'll have a ton of Insect Eggs you can target; just target them and stay a few steps away from them and start chaining sword skills into thin air.


There a lot of Implementations about doing Exact Step Aways or Side Steps to evade enemy attacks or skills. These are actually hard at first, but once you know how to time your dashes to evade enemy skills, it can become more bearable. However, doing it 200, and even 1000 times can be painstaking. Thankfully, there's actually a way to do this rather easily: trigger the Hollow Mission "Food Coma" at the Secured Deepwood in the Hollow Area, and then find a pair of bees around the dungeon; bees will constantly use a skill which consists of some 10 quick hits with their stinger. The game's actually broken when it comes to registering evaded attacks, so you can actually stay away from the bees while targetting, and Dash when they use their skill, which will let you milk out multiple evasions at once without getting hit. Just make sure you're alone and that you keep your Risk low so that you can keep dashing.


Rear Attacks are rather easy; just bring a companion along and use Hate-modifying Battle Skills and armor to keep the enemy engaged on your companion, then flank them and attack them from behind. You can also boost your CRT rate with Battle Skills.


Beating enemies with low risk is actually simple; just switch with your teammate when an enemy is at low HP and finish it off, since switching will normally reset your Risk by drawing Hate from you to your companion. This also applies to beating Hollow Missions with low Risk.


Easiest way to farm NM kills is by going to the Hall of the Exploited, where you can trigger a Hollow Mission where you can kill 2 NMs, but most importantly, you can play a miniboss game in which you can invest certain potions/crystals, charms and ores to fight 3 different NMs and obtain better items in exchange. Just carry a bunch of Health Potions and Recovery Crystals and use them to trigger the NMs to spawn and kill them.


The objective of this type of Implementation is misleading; you actually have to regenerate health a certain amount of times. Just find an area with high-level enemies and let them attack you, then just use as many HP-regeneration Battle Skills as possible, as well as HP Absorb, to regenerate HP quickly. I also recommend you equip Heatcliff's Shield (you obtain it from the DLC stuff, you should read the whole guide, dummy).


Getting poisoned is a pain in the ass; you can generally only make it count as getting poisoned IF you are not already poisoned, otherwise your current Poison ailment will just restart instead of having a new ailment applied. My personal recommendation is that you do the same as with evading; trigger "Food Coma" in the Secured Deepwood and let the Fungi enemies poison you, and once you get poisoned, use "Purifying Flames", "Brawny Resist" and "Resist Attempt" to try and wipe out the ailment so that you can get poisoned again.

As for breath attacks, it's the same, just let yourself be surrounded and attacked by the enemies at the start of the aforementioned dungeon, since their main skill is a breath attack.

As you already know (arguably), this game has heroines (sadly not cocaine) (kill me). These are NPC companions you can take around with you and who will aid you when fighting. In reality, you can pair up with almost any NPC (everyone in your Friends list minus Yui), but only a few characters are meaningful.

Each NPC has an affinity level (from 1 to 5), they can get combat roles depending on what you praise them on, they can level up like you, and heroines can be given weapons and armor, and raising their affinity can unlock new scenes and content; these heroines can also unlock 4 special armor pieces (see below). The main heroines in the game are:

• Asuna
  
• Silica
  
• Lisbeth
  
• Leafa
  
• Sinon
  
• Strea
  
• Philia

Other than that, the rest of the characters (except for Argo and Sachi) are practically pointless fillers, although Kibaou, Yuuki and Klein do have special voice lines and artwork for when you fight with them.


You can raise all the characters' affinity up to level 5, but it's pontless to do it for any character that isn't one of the list above, Argo or Sachi. You'll raise a companion's affinity when those orange musical notes pop out of their head and fall onto the ground. There are quite a few ways to raise affinity:

• Praising characters during combat
  
• Praising characters outside of combat
  
• Chatting
  
• Buying food (totally pointless)
  
• Talking with the fortune teller (also pointless)

The fastest way to raise affinity is by triggering special chat events (characterized by the yellow text bubble above a character's head) and successfully answering each prompt (or just spamming 2, usually). However, this is tedious and takes a lot of time doing nothing else than pressing 2 on your keyboard, so in reality, you'll want to raise your companions' affinity as you play the game. Just go around Aincrad and the Hollow Area with your heroines and praise them, over time you'll raise their affinity to 5.

I personally recommend you raise Strea's affinity first (since she'll become unavailable later during Aincrad's arc), and try to use Philia often in the Hollow Area, since you'll have to go around with the rest of the characters either way. You should leave Argo and Sachi for last.

Once you raise a characters' affinity to 4, you can give them advanced battle orders, and gift heroines weapons and armor. Raising affinity to 5 unlocks a special cutscene in the La Ulpuera Gardens of the Abandoned Area of the Hollow Area, and allows you to hold their hand and carry them at all times, without having to increase their mood first.


Once you increase the mood of one of the main heroines enough to carry them (or bring their affinity to 5), you can go to Agil's shop and carry them, then walk to your room, and then approach your bed. This will trigger a special chat in which, if you fill the bar, will unlock a special cutscene. There are 5 of these cutscenes for each character, and doing it any more times will usually repeat the last cutscene. You can actually do this at any time, but the easiest way to do so is by raising affinity to 5 so you skip having to chat in order to carry them each time.


Each main heroine has 4 special costumes which you can unlock by increasing their fighting style stats; you can see them by interacting with them, then going to "Character Information" and "View Character Information".


These basically work as a limited amount of points that can be assigned to each one of the values seen on these rhombuses (intellectual word, I know). Once you increase two stats of each type (Offensive, Defensive and Support) to the max, you'll unlock a special costume for the character, which will usually boost the stats related to its respective combat type. Once you unlock all 3 costumes, you'll get a special one which generally offers the character a large stat boost. You can equip them by chatting with a heroine, going to "View Character Information" and "About Exclusive Armor".

Increasing their combat style values is easy; they increase depending on what actions you praise them for. The easiest and most straightforward way is to chat with them about their combat style and order them to focus on either Attack, Defense or Support (ignore advanced commands), then just praising them when the notification of them carrying a BUFF, DEF or ATK move shows up above their name during combat.


Each main heroine + Yui have a unique ending. To unlock it, you need to do all of each heroine's cutscenes, their equests on the Hollow Area, and, if I'm not mistaken, have their affinity raised to 5 (excluding Yui's). You unlock each ending by picking each character for the last battle (you unlock a Last Battle option once you beat the game for the first time to agilize the process). The only difference between each ending is the game-closing cutscene you get.


Hollow Fragment has two hidden characters unique to the Hollow Area whom you can unlock, and one you can also use in Aincrad. These Hollow Area-exclusive characters are some which appear during the first few episodes of the anime: Kibaou and Sachi. How do they show up in the Hollow Area? Well, spoiler: it's not them, it's a Hollow copy.

You'll find each character in a different area, as seen in the map below:


Kibaou is in the Fallen Paradise in the Graceleaf Bay Area, while Sachi is, at first, found in the Strait of the Offering in the Alevaste Otherworld Area. To unlock them, you need to go to these areas on your own and speak to them about 3 or 4 times, with an interval of a few in-game days (otherwise they won't show up).

While Kibaou can be unlocked by simply talking to him, you'll have to complete a quest for Sachi, which is carried out in the Research Vault. Once you unlock Kibaou, you'll also get a teleporter to the Fallen Paradise (as seen in my map above), and for Sachi you'll get a teleporter to the Research Vault, where she'll be. They'll both be level 80 upon unlocking them, and can only be used in the Hollow Area (both in singleplayer and solo multiplayer).

The third character is Yuuki, from the second half of Sword Art Online II. You can unlock her by beating the Floor 100 boss and selecting "Yes" when prompted to select whether you want to investigate further or not. This will trigger a cutscene followed by a battle with Yuuki, after which you'll unlock her.


As mentioned earlier, each main heroine, as well as Argo and Sachi. have a special fully-voiced cutscene which can be unlocked and which takes place in La Ulpuera Gardens in the Abandoned Area of the Hollow Area. To unlock them, you have to:

• Raise the heroine's affinity to level 5
  
• Complete all of the heroine's Hollow Area requests
  
• Bring them to the gardens

If all conditions are met, upon entering the gardens the cutscene will play. The only character you don't have to do requests for is Sachi, but you still have to bring her to affinity level 5 (and perhaps Argo didn't have requests, but I can't quite recall, lol).

Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment is, likely, one of the most painful games to frogging complete at 100% completion, because it literally asks you to at least spend 100 HOURS of gameplay to do so. Now, the game doesn't have a percentage counter, so, technically speaking, there is no actual 100% completion, so when I speak about 100% here, I'm referring solely to obtaining all Steam achievements.

So, just so you can get an idea, to 100% the game you'll need to:

• Beat Aincrad at least once without any NPCs dying during a boss fight.
  
• Get the last attacking bonus on every single Aincrad boss.
  
• Reach floor 100 of Aincrad twice.
  
• Beat the Hollow Area.
  
• Complete 100 Implementations.
  
• Complete all Advanced Hollow Missions (I believe, or a certain unspecified number of Hollow Missions)
  
• Reach level 200.
  
• Reach at least 100 million Col once.
  
• Reach affinity 5 with all main heroines, Sachi, and Argo.
  
• Spend 100 hours of gameplay in total, and at least 20 in multiplayer.
  
• Unlock Yuuki.
  
• Unlock all photos, memories, videos and cutscenes in the Gallery.

This should take you, at best, some 150 hours, implying you're VERY fast and just want to get the game off your back ASAP. If you take your time, it'll easily take you over 200 hours.

Next, I'll give you some tips for some achievements so that you can complete them as quick and easily as possible.


I recommend not minding Beta Tester too much during your first playthrough, since you will have to play through Aincrad again either way, and by then you'll likely be overpowered for all bosses. The easiest way to get the last hit on all bosses is by using Dual-Wielded Swords and waiting until the boss has about 1/4th of the last bar left of health, then prompting everyone to back away (Shift+2) and using an Arcane Skill or a long combo skill such as "The Eclipse" or "Starbust Stream". In case you fail to get a last hit, just Alt+F4 out of the game before you return to Aincrad and do the boss fight again.


As I mentioned at the very beginning of the guide, just sell any weapons, armor and ores you find and you'll rack up 100 million Col rather quickly.


To complete all of the Gallery entries you'll need to:

• Do ALL cutscenes and side quests in Aincrad (this includes redoing some cutscenes in case you didn't finish the Hollow Fragment Arc during your first Aincrad playthrough, given that Philia can show up in some AIncrad cutscenes).
  
• Do ALL cutscenes in the Hollow Area.
  
• Unlock Yuuki.
  
• Do all bedroom cutscenes with the main heroines.
  
• Complete all of the heroines' Hollow Area requests and reach affinity 5 (including Argo and Sachi).
  
• Get every single heroine ending.

This achievement is actually a bit misleading. You actually need to bring your character to level 200, at least from my experience. Otherwise, just keep leveling up until you unlock it.


Well, this one certainly sucks buttocks. Fastest way to do this is by doing the "Lust of the Young Kobold Lord" Hollow Mission in solo multiplayer in Normal difficulty. Equip a good weapon (preferably a crafted or special 2H Sword, Katana or Rapier), bring the best companions you have, and kill the HNM for this mission as quickly as possible by spamming Sword Skills (specially an Arcane Skill). You'll have to do it 100 times, and it'll take like 5 hours or so, so just put on some music while you do this so it isn't as tedious.

NOTE: Yes, this works in solo multiplayer.


This is actually really easy to achieve, but don't fret if you don't manage it during your first playthrough, since, again, you'll have to practically beat the game twice. So, the way to go for this achievement is by using Dual-Wielding when fighting bosses, since the skills for these swords tend to be disruptive and keep enemies from attacking. Command your teammates to interrupt the enemy, defend, use Sword Skills, heal and retreat as you see fit. Remember to use skills such as "Healing Circle" and "Protective Armor" to heal and protect your teammates, as well as other skills to regenerate their health and/or buff their DEF. If this keeps not working, just get to around level 200 before you play through the Aincrad Arc again, by then you'll beat bosses in less than a minute and they won't pose a threat to your teammates either since they'll have a high level as well.


While this is actually very straightforward, I recommend you try to use a separate timer on your phone or somewhere else to keep track of your multiplayer time since the game doesn't differentiate gameplay time between singleplayer and multiplayer. You can do this in solo multiplayer no problem. You'll get to 100 hours of gameplay if you just play the game and aim to 100%, on the other hand, getting 20 hours of multiplayer time is a bit more tricky; you'll probably spend some 6 hours leveling up (more or less), and some 4 or 5 doing "This Game Is Not for Fun", so the rest of the time you can either AFK it or use it to raise the affinity of heroines or just grind XP or items.


This one is also painful. While during normal gameplay you'll likely upgrade a lot of weapons at Lisbeth's, it's very unlikely you'll do this 200 times. The fastest way for you to do this is by grabbing a few weapons while having some 400 units of any ore in total in your inventory, then going to Lisbeth's and upgrading a different stat on the same weapon repeteadly until you're told the weapon cannot receive more upgrades. Eventually you'll unlock the achievement.


Let's say you're a sad person and have nothing better to do than to play this game (hell, this is likely the case, you wouldn't be reading this otherwise), but let's say that not only are you that sad person, but you're also stuck in hell and your punishment is that you have to play this game for the rest of eternity; what a cruel fate! Well, my dear sinner, don't fret, for here I am to give you a checklist of literally EVERY SINGLE FLOGGING THING TO DO IN THIS GAME so that you can actually run out of content, so here it goes, this is the 200% checklist:

• Complete all Implementations.
  
• Loop through Aincrad enough times that the enemies' level gets capped (it probably caps at 2147483647, so it'll take roughly 100.000 years)
  
• Get your level to a point in which it gets capped as well.
  
• Get all of the NPCs' level to said point as well.
  
• Reach affinity 5 with ALL NPCs.
  
• Unlock each NPC's Arcane Skill.
  
• Cap your Col.
  
• 3-star all Sword Skills.
  
• Reach the max possible floor in the Underground Dungeon (probably also 2147483647).
  
• Chain all the skills possible with every single weapon in the OSS Recording.
  
• Fully stack every single item.
  
• Find every single piece of armor/accessory.
  
• Fully stack every single piece of armor/accessory.
  
• Find every single individual weapon.
  
• Find every single variation of each individual weapon.
  
• Fully stack every single variation of each individual weapon.
  
• Fully upgrade every single weapon in every single stack of every single individual weapon with every single upgradeable stat possible.
  
• Repeat this in every single save slot.

Well, this should hopefully entertain you for the rest of eternity, because doing this would take, likely, at least, some 800.000 years. Fun, innit?